Attached

him and he would win her over. Although the film started with a spoiler
—saying that it wasn’t a love story—we never stopped wishing for its
two stars to ride off into the sunset together.
But on second thought, we quickly realized we had bought into every
possible relationship fallacy. Even we, with our professional
understanding of the science behind romantic behavior, had reverted
to our old—and very unhelpful—beliefs. We allowed some deeply
ingrained misconceptions to influence our thinking.
The first misconception is that everyone has the same capacity for
intimacy. We’ve been raised to believe that every person can fall
deeply in love (this part might well be true) and that when this happens,
he or she will be transformed into a different person (this part is not!).
Regardless of what they were like before, when people find “the one,”
they supposedly become adoring, faithful, supportive partners—free of
qualms about the relationship. It’s tempting to forget that, in fact,
people have very different capacities for intimacy. And when one
person’s need for closeness is met with another person’s need for
independence and distance, a lot of unhappiness ensues. By being
cognizant of this fact, both of you can navigate your way better in the
dating world to find someone with intimacy needs similar to your own
(if you are unattached) or reach an entirely new understanding about
your differing needs in an existing relationship—a first and necessary
step toward steering it in a more secure direction.
The second common misconception we fell victim to is that
marriage is the be-all and end-all. Romantic stories tend to end there,
and we are all tempted to believe that when someone gets married,
it’s unequivocal proof of the power of love to transform; that the
decision to marry means they’re now ready for true closeness and
emotional partnership. We don’t like to admit that people might enter
marriage without having these goals in mind, let alone the ability to
achieve them. We want to believe, as we had hoped for in the movie,
that once married, anyone can change and treat his/her spouse like
royalty (especially if two people are deeply in love with each other).
In this book, however, we’ve shown how mismatched attachment
styles can lead to a great deal of unhappiness in marriage, even for
people who love each other greatly. If you are in such a relationship,